Another Tips to Keep Reading On

Sem break's gonna come to an end and halfway through my reading challenge this year, I discover within myself that to make reading more interesting and enriching. I don't recommend this way for people who only got started to cultivate a reading habit though since to adopt a long-term habit, it must be an enjoyable experience till the end so at early stage, stick to the readings that won't keep your eyes away.

However, after a considerable amount of books, I do believe that we need to have a change of pace to keep the reading's culture alive, that is to read books that dive outside our interest pool. Why? Because new things excites our mind. If we only read the same type of book, it's like living the same dull routine of daily life, it may seems different with each piece but we may sooner pick up the gist of the rest of the story. A beginner's mind always gets motivated because he is experiencing new things, not things he already knew.

I'm only suggesting to switch to another genre every once in a while between books that of your interest, not to drop them down completely. My interest mainly caught up in Psychology and Philosophy, but I have benefited so much with other genres such as Sci-fi, Biographies, Classics and History to make each read feels much more meaningful.

In the history of knowledge, if we never challenge or question the current ones that we already knew from different perspective, how do we suppose to expand our understanding of the world and come to what we have achieve today? I believe it's the same with ourselves, we won't know what else might interest us unless we took the first leap into the ambiguity and explore it.

Forrest Gump said "My momma always said, Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." I think re quote it by replacing 'Life' with 'Book' conveys the same importance.

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A Monologue pt. 1

A painting was hung on a wall. A man walks by and stop momentarily to appreciate the art's beauty. The element, composed by different colours, precisely complement each other in ever so harmony. The man couldn't help but to wonder, what makes the painting wonderful? Is it the paint or the painter?

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I once told a friend that if Philosopher A wrote 3 books encapsulating his wisdom and I read all of it plus another book from Philosopher B, then literally I'll be more brilliant than the former. Obviously, it was such a stupid remark and my friend refuted the theory by implying the deuteragonist core of reading: understanding the message. Even if I'm well defined of each word vocabulary and grammar, the real essence of the meaning in between the lines stay within the author experience and thought.

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"I don't know. Well of course leading a predetermined life cycle seems lack in meaning but after all, isn't it the memories we make along the way that matters? The meaning of life is still there though. Look at all these encyclopedias. It is intended as a safe repository of human knowledge, in case a catastrophe swept our civilization and render all technology to dust. Like the ancient cultures of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, at least over time, we leave behind some random surviving fragments of our writing for the future to remember us. Why does it matter for them to remember? So that they won't repeat our mistake. History is to civilization what memory is to individuals. If we forgot what we had done in the past, we lost our meaningful identity as a person. Nobody pays an attention to encyclopedia nowadays, it's mundane and will keep updated over and over again. But it has meaning, like our lives, just that we need time to understand why."

"Well, in the end, we are all a merchant of culture, isn't it?"

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On The Upside of Social Networks

Some people rant about the ugly truth about the society of social networking service. "There are too much lies. I can't stand it." "Why posted about what you do yesterday? Why should I care?" and etc.

For one, I think we should understand and accept the reality that the world had long changed they way we connect and obtain information in daily basis. Baby Boomers and Generation X faced difficulties to get better education as they had to struggle in pursuit of independence and towards rebuilding a better nation while Generation Y had better luck with more things to learn, in fact there is an abundance of information that the challenge nowadays is not how to obtain knowledge, but to compare between them and determine which one is the truth and false. So, it's something that we should face and find a solution, not to run away from it. If not, then, how Generation Y differs from the former?

As society gets more complicated, so does our problem. And in the world of Web 2.0 (google the term), networking is crucial than ever. An argument came to say that posting meaningless status updates over time become an "awareness". These statuses will be like dots connecting each other to form a portrait, by looking through a person timeline and see what the person shared, we somehow can pick his/her personality, mood/thought, preferences etc. No longer do we need to call each person to know about what they are up to so the next time we met them even though rarely get together, it shouldn't be hard to strike a conversation. Who knows, having a preserved old friendship might come in handy later.

Furthermore, we are now embracing "public thinking", the ability to broadcast our ideas and thoughts. When we see issues on a news site, there are people giving brilliant and thought-provoking comments for us to ponder upon and question-answering sites like quora.com had people discusses about particular questions in multiple perspectives. In fact, some companies went to harness this opportunity to ask people about their products to deliver more satisfying benefits to consumers.

All in all, I'm still acknowledging the downside of social media, but as a rule of thumb, we should always be mindful and keep aware when our dallying in digital environment is taking us away from doing things we should do. It is a tool, and like when you go to a stream of river, you don't inhale the entire river but take a few sips and walk away some time until you're thirsty again.

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Expectation And The Beauty of Solitary Works

“No translation can expect to equal, much less to excel, the original. The excellence of a translation can only be judged by noting how far it has succeeded in reproducing the original tone, colors, style, the delicacy of sentiment, the force of inert strength, the peculiar expressions native to the language with which the original is written, or whatever is its marked characteristic. Strictly speaking, the only way one can derive full benefit or enjoyment from a foreign work is to read the original, for any intelligence at second-hand never gives the kind of satisfaction which is possible only through the direct touch with the original."

An excerpt of translator note found in the few pages before the first chapter of Soseki Natsume, “Botchan". The passage was registered in my mind first while I'm on my way home from campus, hearing it as audiobook. As my eyes glared away to the breathtaking rice field horizon, I pondered in silence about how it bear a similarity of the meaning in between the lines by the translator with my perception of 'Expectation'.

Having living as a human ourselves, we already came to realize without much effort, the fact that each of us has our own desire, dreams and goals. What may seem as being in the same path doesn't guarantee a unification of intention by both parties. Thus, implementing trust to others in hoping that the person also possess the same enthusiastic attitude toward the task itself is rather.. unrealistic. Just like when first impression is not always right. We make up a story in mind from the first impression, and because of that, we either like or hate someone by ourselves telling so, unknowingly the full extent of that someone's behavior.

We wouldn't be able to read someone's mind, and even if we are able to, it will only bring more adverse casualties. Even so, translating passion from our mind to others also won't produce the exact same awareness. The ineffable expression would only amounted in abundance solely in our world, looping eternally as long as the interest keep blazing. What felt as special for us does not necessarily struck a match with others.

So, I think being selfish is not always wrong, given a boundary of definition that we actually meant, sometimes working alone is the perfect methodology in order to get things right. In solitary, a furnace of desire to perfection is being made, unaffected by even a faintest impurity that might be caused by an intervention of other hand that doesn't fully grasp the grand ideal blueprint. Sure, it means taking more time, but thinking about the final quintessential satisfaction is not a bad idea, either.

Hoping to much will kill, as while we are busy worrying for an expectation, the world still spinning in negligence of our problem. In the end, we use our own hand to feed ourselves.

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Quietly, A Reader Somewhere, Is Pretending

I always believe that it's not how many books we've read that crown the importance chart but rather, is how much have we gained and learned some lessons or values to be embedded or that producing changes in our life even from just a single book. 

It is actually quite disturbing when some people inquiring with quite an abundance of time regarding on my personal total finished titles, and more often than not, this question undoubtedly rendering myself with a brimming reluctance to respond, as if I was being asked "How many games that you've played?" 

I've met a person who posted an amount of photos parading list of books he/she (identity clue concealment intended) has bought or currently read, and one doesn't need a detective intuition to easily deduct that the person is a 'heavy reader' based on the visible 'super intellectual' book titles (refer [1] for Miss Elliott's fascinating scale for the heaviness of readers). However, despite the notion of 'the more one read, the better one becomes', it seems to me, at least for this particular case perhaps, that the notion falls apart as I've experienced on how unprofessional the person is as a team and some other names has verified the statement coming from their experiences as well.

Do we who felt annoyed are any better? Of course not, in fact, it struck me right on the conscious mind that sometimes, either one has or hasn't read a book, yields the same result. And it serves me a great deal of reminder that having a plenty of finished books on the shelf doesn't make a person wise, and there're many other ways to learn apart from churning a thick book, namely brainstorming alternatives instead of giving up in real-life situation for example.

I don't know how to end the paragraph so maybe a piece of advice would do: read a book to your heart's content, as if it will be the last book you read. Take as much as you can, and just like a photograph is just a shadow and doesn't represent the real thing, I believe that pretending to be smart is a complete waste of time when it can be used for more meaningful acts even in the absence of the public's eye.

[1] http://misselliottsfascinatingenglishblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-makes-heavy-reader.html

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A Reader's Room Filled With Scent Of Imagination

It was a few hours after I finished reading Haruki Murakami's Firefly, that an actual firefly (believe me, I don't have the faintest idea how it managed to enter my close-shut room) did really strolling in the air in front of me before perching for a slight moment on the brink of my laptop screen. I recognized it for the blinking dim-lighted neon on its back and the intervals of the light kinda resembled an all-nighter's struggling eyes, which also indicates a type of person I am, particularly right in the situation I was having at the moment. I was not in the middle of an incomplete assignment nor getting some unfinished great movies to watch, but rather, endeavoring myself on structuring the perfect words for a sentence, which in turn, I hope to make up into blocks of written evidence for my future self to look upon.

I guess the more I read, the urgency to write something began to accumulate even more in a strangest manner. I would often tried to depict a lesson experienced in some particular days but as soon as I engaged into the text cursor on the top left of a new draft blog post, nothing came out in form of words, but instead, I would repeatedly realized that the floating ideas was just like describing the taste of a food, you can only imagine them but somehow it's hard to put the perfect instances unless the person who read the description really did took a bite of it.

Perhaps that's why I always thought that everyone is an 'imaginary' author, with stories of a lifetime to tell but only a few who has the right skill of translating them into a  language of words, became an authentic one. For others, retaining the ideas while travelling across the sea of words in the search for personal quintessential arrangements was a tedious effort since like everyone else, as our curiosity about abnormal things in our life (in this case, a distinct idea came up in mind) runs it's course, our attention to it will faded away with time.

However, just because we couldn't express our thought, doesn't mean we should stop enjoying the aesthetics of reading. Opening to read a new book is like travelling somewhere far. It's long, tiring and we are not even know what will happen next. We just merely taking a chance by sometimes following recommendations from others who already went there and enjoyed the experiences themselves (book reviews) or simply taking risk on our own based on intuition. Nevertheless, either the journey was good or bad, at least by the time we reached the end of the road (the last sentence), we'd added up another experiences, a kind of achievement, for at least we finished something that we'd started.

And that my friend, would probably be my answer to the reason why some people love to read but maybe will not become a person who would produce a quote or a thought-provoking lines. These people simply wish to retreat in their solitary and quiet zone, building their own megalopolis of imagination after a long day of tiresome real life flounder.

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Puisi Yang Dibiarkan Mencari Maknanya Sendiri

Berterabur aksara di angkasaPetik beberapa buat maknaMakna yang masih dibuai anganDan angan juga berkaca-kacaSukar mencari dasarnyaTenggelam dalam himpunanBait demi baitYang diperbetulkan tiap kaliTapi masih rapuhMenyentuh hati

Maka berserakanlah kamu
Mencari teman ertiLalu bersahabat eratlahMoga-mogaMeski ditenggelami masa Meski cacat satu atau duaTetap (kelihatan) utuh dari jauhDan terbaca walau kemalasanDisaksikan

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